Mary Shea

Mary Shea is a principal analyst serving Forrester’s B2B Marketing Professionals. In this role, she writes for and advises clients on routes-to-market strategies in the age of the customer. Mary’s research specifically focuses on the evolving B2B buyer and how business leaders must adapt, organize, and enable their marketers, sellers, and channel partners to succeed with empowered B2B buyers both today and in the future.

Mary has significant operational experience, having held general management, commercial leadership, business development, and marketing positions at companies ranging from high-growth startups to publicly traded firms. She has an exciting track record of building, developing, and leading teams and driving profitable growth through direct and indirect channels across both domestic and international markets.

An accomplished public speaker, Mary speaks regularly on a variety of business topics. She is an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business where she teaches a course she created called Building Effective Go-to-Market Organizations, designed to arm the next generation of business leaders with the knowledge, strategies, and tools to succeed in an increasingly dynamic marketplace.

Previous Work Experience

Before rejoining Forrester, Mary founded The RevvEx Group, a consulting firm focused on helping companies increase sales and marketing effectiveness. Prior to founding The RevvEx Group, Mary was chief commercial officer at InContext Solutions and Frontier Strategy Group. Mary previously worked at Forrester from 1996 to 2002, where she was a member of the sales organization, starting out as an inside sales executive and rising through the ranks and holding progressive leadership positions at a time of immense growth for the company.

Education

Mary Shea

Mary Shea is a principal analyst serving Forrester’s B2B Marketing Professionals. In this role, she writes for and advises clients on routes-to-market strategies in the age of the customer. Mary’s research specifically focuses on the evolving B2B buyer and how business leaders must adapt, organize, and enable their marketers, sellers, and channel partners to succeed with empowered B2B buyers both today and in the future.

Mary has significant operational experience, having held general management, commercial leadership, business development, and marketing positions at companies ranging from high-growth startups to publicly traded firms. She has an exciting track record of building, developing, and leading teams and driving profitable growth through direct and indirect channels across both domestic and international markets.

An accomplished public speaker, Mary speaks regularly on a variety of business topics. She is an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business where she teaches a course she created called Building Effective Go-to-Market Organizations, designed to arm the next generation of business leaders with the knowledge, strategies, and tools to succeed in an increasingly dynamic marketplace.

Previous Work Experience

Before rejoining Forrester, Mary founded The RevvEx Group, a consulting firm focused on helping companies increase sales and marketing effectiveness. Prior to founding The RevvEx Group, Mary was chief commercial officer at InContext Solutions and Frontier Strategy Group. Mary previously worked at Forrester from 1996 to 2002, where she was a member of the sales organization, starting out as an inside sales executive and rising through the ranks and holding progressive leadership positions at a time of immense growth for the company.

With traditional sales channels fatigued, B2B marketing and sales leaders are getting serious about rolling out social selling programs. This report presents a review of 18 vendors in the B2B social selling market. Marketing and sales leaders should use it to better understand these vendors' capabilities within major market segments and subsegments and to inform their strategies as they modernize their sales technology stack.

While an X-as-a-service (XaaS) model has many benefits for vendors and customers alike, migrating from a traditional to an XaaS delivery model can wreak havoc on selling systems. When embarking on this journey, advance planning and preparation are critical. This report surfaces best practices gleaned from native and in-transition cloud companies and provides recommendations so that B2B marketing and sales leaders can avoid common pitfalls when migrating to XaaS.

As B2B buyers' expectations change, the boundaries blur between their preferred sales channels. Leading B2B firms recognize this and are adapting their routes-to-market strategies. This report details the shifts in routes prioritization and mix underway and highlights mini case study examples of companies that are successfully modernizing their strategies. It also provides specific recommendations for how B2B marketing and sales leaders can place the customer at the core of their firms' commercial strategy.

B2B marketing and sales leaders must transform their sales forces to keep pace with digitally oriented buyers. By gleaning best practices from three global digital sales leaders at Cisco Systems, General Electric (GE), and IBM, we highlight key themes of their endeavors in this report. We also provide recommendations for how B2B firms of various shapes and sizes should move their sales forces forward.

B2B sellers face buyers who increasingly prefer a self-guided journey. While simple commodity transactions can largely occur without direct sales interaction, for more highly considered purchases, B2B marketing and sales leaders must plan for buyers who require sophisticated, consultative, and technology-enabled salespeople. This report highlights the attributes and activities of a new breed of seller as well as the role innovative technologies play in elevating sellers' status and rebalancing the power dynamic with buyers.

B2B sellers face buyers who increasingly prefer a self-guided journey. While simple commodity transactions can largely occur without direct sales interaction, for more highly considered purchases, B2B marketing and sales leaders must plan for buyers who require sophisticated, consultative, and technology-enabled salespeople. This report highlights the attributes and activities of a new breed of seller as well as the role innovative technologies play in elevating sellers' status and rebalancing the power dynamic with buyers.

B2B buying has changed: Buyers prefer to do research themselves rather than rely on vendors' sales reps. The result: a dramatic shift in the role and focus of B2B marketing organizations. This brief highlights the major changes coming in 2016 as a result of this shift and their implications in four realms: go-to-customer strategy, the accelerating shift from art to science, tech investments, and B2B messaging.

B2B marketing and sales leaders must transform their sales forces to keep pace with digitally oriented buyers. By gleaning best practices from three global digital sales leaders at Cisco Systems, General Electric (GE), and IBM, we highlight key themes of their endeavors in this report. We also provide recommendations for how B2B firms of various shapes and sizes should move their sales forces forward.

Demographics prove the heads-down generation is well on its way to becoming a dominant force within and outside their firms. While recent research indicates that 73% of Millennials are involved in B2B purchasing decisions, their rise to power is largely going unnoticed. Companies that purposefully adapt their marketing and sales strategies to better mesh with the Millennial mindset will outperform the competition. This report considers Millennial purchasing preferences and recommends ways in which B2B organizations can fine-tune their approach to succeed with this increasingly present and influential buyer.

Is the B2B salesman dead — or simply in need of a reboot? As B2B buyers increasingly include the digital channel in some or all of their purchase process, B2B marketers must partner with sales leaders to prepare their sales forces to adapt. In this report, we look at Forrester's four seller archetypes, focusing on the Consultant, and suggest new ways to design a scalable sales force built to thrive in this rapidly evolving environment.